


sing to me of the ineffable mystery

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 11:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: “You said you read one of my scrolls,” Gabrielle said, voice tentative and low in the quiet intimacy of the night. “Which one?”Post Season Five's "Kindred Spirits" (or, the one where Xena finally reads Gabrielle's scrolls... or one of them, anyway.)





	sing to me of the ineffable mystery

“Xena?”

 

“Mmm?”

 

“You said you read one of my scrolls,” Gabrielle said, voice tentative and low in the quiet intimacy of the night. “Which one?”

 

Xena rolled over and let her eyes trace the beloved features she’d long since committed to memory, unexpectedly charmed by the old craving for approval she found in Gabrielle’s eyes.

 

“The Return of Callisto,” Xena murmured. She didn’t say anything else, knowing that Gabrielle would understand.

 

Sure enough, the corners of her mouth twitched up, her eyes dropping to Xena’s lips so that Xena was wholly unsurprised when she pressed herself close and chastely, teasingly, kissed the corner of her mouth. Xena wound her arms around her and threaded her hands into Gabrielle’s short hair, keeping her close lest she try to pull away.

 

“I’m glad that that was the one that made you stay,” Gabrielle said quietly, her breath warm against Xena’s mouth. In the background, Eve whimpered sleepily in the cradle Xena had rigged up for her, but the sound itself seemed to soothe her back to sleep.

 

If someone had told her back in those early days that not too far in her future she’d be here, in bed with Gabrielle, their child on the other side of the room, Xena would have punched them and put on a smile when an inevitably oblivious Gabrielle asked what was wrong.

 

Xena had nearly forgotten the exhilarating discomfort of those days, from the realization that she loved Gabrielle to the recognition that she was even capable of love at all anymore. She’d spent months nurturing her feelings like the tender, precious things they were while holding her keen awareness of Gabrielle’s youth and inexperience in the balance, knowing even then that that Gabrielle hadn’t been completely unaware of Xena’s feelings, or even of her own. She just hadn’t known the right way to look at them.

 

Xena hadn’t been in a hurry for her to figure it out - or at least, she’d thought she hadn’t needed to be. Stealing a kiss from the corner of Gabrielle’s curious lips had been her one concession to that when it had already been too late. Afterwards Gabrielle had beamed, already made a new wife from someone else’s kiss, and Xena’s heart had churred a constant panicky _what if, what if, what if_ in response.

 

One of Gabrielle’s hands drifted now to cover Xena’s heart, where Xena could feel it beating out a sympathetic echo. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

 

Xena bent down and caught her lips with her own, deepening the contact as easily as she had a thousand times before. Gabrielle responded in the same way, the taste and feel of her more familiar and more infinitely precious to Xena than even the assurance of her own heartbeat. There was a tiny smile pulling at Gabrielle’s lips when Xena broke the lingering contact, and Xena’s eyes drank her in: not a new wife, not technically a wife at all, but steadfastly Xena’s nonetheless.

 

“I think you know,” Xena murmured teasingly in response, and Gabrielle’s faint smile turned into an undeniable thing. Unable to help herself, she kissed Gabrielle again lazy and slow, once, twice, three times, until Gabrielle’s arms had snuck around Xena’s back in an unconscious mirror of Xena’s arms around her.

 

For so long, Xena’s world had only been limited by her mind and her selfishness, and both of those had been limitless. In those early days with Gabrielle, wandering for penance and trying to ignore her elemental understanding of the greater world's rhythms, it had been a shock to realize how often the world narrowed to the two of them without her noticing. Now, impossibly, it was a revelation all over again. Here, where the whole world was contained by four walls, Xena’s arms, and a cradle she’d made with her own hands; here, where their friendship, so deeply embodied a thing even before Xena had first dared to kiss her, was resettling around them like a favorite quilt. Now Xena was cradling Gabrielle’s jaw in her hand and letting her fingers settle behind Gabrielle’s ear at the edge of her hairline. Now Gabrielle was humming contentedly, leaving a light vibration on Xena’s lips as she pulled away to settle her body against Xena’s.

 

“Should’ve done that back then,” she said.

 

Xena huffed a laugh and shifted minutely to help her in the quest to settle arms, legs, torsos, heads in the places they’d long since claimed for their own. “You woulda freaked,” she objected.  

 

“Is that really what you thought?” Gabrielle asked, amused, and raised her head to look at Xena. “Maybe I didn’t know enough to say ‘Xena, please kiss me on the lips’, but I wouldn’t have ‘freaked’, either.”

 

“Hmm. If you say so.”

 

“I do,” Gabrielle insisted on a yawn. “Did you ever even consider the reasons I ran after you in the first place? Or the reasons I started writing my scrolls?”

 

Oh, Xena absolutely had. Back when Gabrielle had been an idolizing teenager with bright eyes and absolutely no way to know the real weight and darkness of Xena’s soul, she’d been plagued with thoughts of the idea of her that Gabrielle had constructed and cheerfully begun disseminating across the known world. She’d had no desire to discover just how far away from that idea she actually fell, or - selfishly - to question how much of Gabrielle’s open friendship and love she’d come by honestly.

 

But yet today, there she’d been: bursting to life on the page, clothed in Gabrielle’s words and so much love and understanding that it had been just like the punch to the gut her younger self would have doled out to anyone who dared to make her believe that this world was already hers, if she were only brave enough to claim it.

 

There weren’t many more words needed now, not when they’d known each other for as long and as well as they had; but Xena knew that one thing did need to be said.

 

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t understand.”

 

Gabrielle didn’t ask what it was she hadn’t understood. Xena herself didn’t know if she was apologizing for not reading her scrolls before now, for nearly having left, or for taking this - any of this - for granted. Grudgingly, she guessed that Gabrielle already knew it was some combination of all three, and Xena felt it in the way she rubbed a forgiving hand over the top of her arm.

 

“But now you do?” was all she said.

 

“Yeah,” Xena said, pressing her lips to the top of Gabrielle’s blonde head. “I do.”

 

“Good.”

 

The renewed silence that fell seemed more like a product of their connection that a result of the end of their conversation, and Xena could already sense Gabrielle basking in it and letting it lull her into the first stages of sleep. With a hint of regret - but only a hint - Xena gravely said, “Gabrielle.”

 

Her tone caused Gabrielle to raise her head in concern, as if sensing the greater world once again encroaching on their peace.

 

It would, inevitably - but not tonight.

 

“Please kiss me on the lips,” she finished, finally letting a grin break her carefully stoic expression.

 

With a surprised laugh, Gabrielle did, and more besides.

**Author's Note:**

> originally something that was part of my unfinished bard gabs series ("someone will remember us, i say") before I realized that season five just wasn't gonna get covered in it; then posted to tumblr; then cleaned up a little and posted here. so if you think you've seen this before, you're probably right! I had such a feel at the fact that Return of Callisto was the "scroll" that made Xena come to her senses in this ep, and in a season so flatly devoid of feels you can bet it was one that stuck with me.


End file.
